Shot Through the Heart

by Nicole Helm

  Willa stared, uncomprehending, at the nylon rope pulled tight around her arms. She could move her legs, but she didn’t know what to do with them. The ground was cold under her, but there was something warm and soft next to her. A light scent, faint, like a memory.

  “Willa, baby.”

  Was that her mother’s voice? Willa told herself to look toward it, but she couldn’t seem to turn her head. She couldn’t seem to make her body do any of the things it should.

  Was she already dead? But she heard her mother’s voice, and something that sounded like a sob. No, that wasn’t right. Her mother didn’t cry. She had to be dreaming.

  You need to wake up, then.

  But there was pain and confusion, and she kept shying away from taking a grip on full consciousness. This fog seemed better. Safer. She could make things make sense here. Nothing made sense outside the fog.

  “Willa. Talk to me, sweetheart.” Mom’s voice was more like a whisper now. Was it really her mother? Maybe she was hallucinating. But there was a warm body next to her.

  Willa had no idea how long it took her to find the strength to turn her head, toward the voice, toward the warmth. She tried to blink and focus as a face wavered in her vision. Close. So close.

  Mom’s green eyes. The nose so like Willa’s own. Her mother. Not a figment of her imagination. Not some after-life hallucination, because Willa could see her. Feel her pressed next to her.

  “Mom,” she managed to croak.

  “It’s going to be okay,” Mom said fiercely. But there were tears in Mom’s eyes, and Willa didn’t know how things could be okay if her mother was crying. Her mother was a spy. A woman trained to withstand torture, to take down any threat in her way.

  But big, fat tears rolled down Mom’s cheeks.

  Everything was so woozy, so off. Willa knew she had to find some strength, some concentration. Her head pounded, but something had to be done. Mom was crying. That wasn’t right. Willa had to find the strength to make something right.

  “This wasn’t how it was supposed to go,” Dad was muttering, pacing in front of them.

  Dad. Who’d fought her, hurt her and then dragged her inside the bunker. The bunker. Willa squinted through the pain and the fog and tried to understand her surroundings.

  She was sitting on the ground, shoulder to shoulder with Mom, who was shoulder to shoulder with another woman. That woman had to be Elsie. She was completely still, her head nodded forward. Willa would have thought she was dead, but she wasn’t particularly pale, and there was a slight rise and fall of her chest.

  “Alive, but drugged,” Mom whispered, her gaze following Dad going back and forth in front of them.

  He slapped the barrel of the gun against his palm as he moved. His eyes looked even wilder in the full light of the bunker. Willa could clearly see the fear in her own mother’s eyes.

  The gray fog threatened to take over again. Safer there. Easier there. But the cold trickle of fear cut through her ability to fully let go.

  “It has to end. It has to end. We have to end it,” Dad said. Over and over and over.

  Willa knew she wasn’t functioning at full capacity, but she still understood her father wasn’t...sane. Panic crept through the gray cloud of pain and centered her in the here and now. Her temple throbbed violently. Both an outside burning feeling where she was sure she was bleeding, and an inside bone-deep pointed pain.

  And still Dad paced. Willa didn’t think he’d always been like this. God, she hoped the man she’d known and loved hadn’t been an act with this underneath.

  But whoever was pacing in front of them now was not the father she loved. Who’d taught her how to fight, who’d protected her. This was someone else.

  He’d tied her up. He’d tied Mom up. And poor Elsie, who had nothing to do with her family’s current problems except she was part of a group trying to stop a hit man.

  How did it all connect? Holden and Shay and Mom and Dad and the men who’d shot at her house?

  “I don’t understand anything that is going on,” Willa said, thought it felt a bit like someone else had said it. Like she was two different people—the body and the brain, severed.

  Except she’d said the words and Mom was weeping quietly next to her.

  “There’s nothing to understand, Wills. Nothing,” Dad said firmly. “Too many mistakes. The mistakes have to be corrected. I have to correct them.”

  Mom took a deep breath beside her, and when she spoke, whatever trace of upset and tears were gone. She was calm and forceful. “William, look at me.”

  But Dad only shook his head. “Have to be corrected,” he mumbled, still tapping the gun. “They want us dead. There’s no escape.”

  “We have always escaped before,” Mom said, but her voice cracked at the last word. “William. Please.”

  Dad’s head shaking grew more violent. “No, no, no. Too late. It’s over. It has to be over. I have to end it.” He stopped moving abruptly, looking straight at Willa. “She has to be first.”

  Willa tried not to react. Or cry. She tried to hold on to the gray fog, but it kept lifting, leaving her with more and more clarity that the chances of her making out of this alive were getting slimmer and slimmer.

  “William! She is your daughter.” Mom’s voice was like an odd echo, followed by sobs that couldn’t be coming from her mother. Her mother was too strong. Too brave.

  “We should have done this a long time ago. All three of us. Until we’re all dead, they can hurt us. But once we’re dead, they can’t.”

  He was going to kill her. Willa couldn’t reconcile it. Even as the gun was pointed at her, and she knew her father would pull the trigger. Purposefully. With the intent to end her life.

  Mom was screaming and sobbing now, fighting the bonds around them, trying to maneuver her body in front of Willa’s. But Willa knew it wouldn’t matter.

  He wanted them both dead. To end it.

  He held the gun steady. His eyes were cold, detached. “They can torture me, but I won’t let them torture you. We’ve been found out. Our cover is blown. We’re surrounded. There’s no escape this time. They can get what they need out of me. But not you. I won’t let them hurt my girls.”

  Dad’s voice broke. Mom was sobbing. Willa couldn’t find it within her to cry or plead. She didn’t know how to argue with his words when she hardly knew who was after them. What they were up against or what had caused him to break with reality.

  Besides, he was too far gone. His mind had broken, cracked into something deranged.

  All Willa could do was close her eyes and hope for some kind of miracle.

  * * *

  THE WEEPING GREW louder as Holden inched forward. He could hear the voices but still couldn’t see anyone in the main room yet.

  He forced himself to focus on the entryway to the main room. The brighter light. The angles. He couldn’t think about the weeping. Whether it was Willa. If she was hurt. That would split his focus. It might make his hand shake when he had to be nothing but cold. Precise.

  He had to do everything in his power to get Willa out of there unharmed.

  He got close to the main room entrance then paused, straining to hear over the quiet crying.

  “No, no, no. Too late,” a man’s voice was saying. “It’s over. It has to be over. I have to end it. She has to be first.”

  A woman’s voice rang out. It started tough and authoritative but gradually got desperately panicked. “William! She is your daughter.”

  She. The she had to be Willa. These were Willa’s parents? That would explain how they’d known to get into the tunnels, but why would the dad be talking about ending it? What did Willa have to be first to do?

  He thought about just walking in. If Willa was with her parents, surely they’d taken care of whoever she was fighting with. Surely things were okay.

  But s
omething—a gut feeling, a deeper understanding he didn’t fully comprehend yet—kept him where he was. Listening. Waiting.

  “We should have done this a long time ago,” the man said. “All three of us. Until we’re all dead, they can hurt us. But once we’re dead, they can’t.”

  Immediately Holden moved closer, until he could actually see into most of the room. Willa, the woman he assumed was her mother and a slumped-over Elsie were tied together in a corner. A tall, slender man holding a gun paced in front of them.

  Holden raised his own weapon. He could take the shot to kill. In another situation, he wouldn’t have thought twice. But this was Willa’s father. He couldn’t...do that in front of her. Not while she was watching.

  But he could hardly let her die, and if the man was dead set on killing his own wife and daughter, a shot aimed only to injure might end up with him still getting off a shot on Willa or her mother or Elsie.

  He could make a noise, try to lure Willa’s father out toward him, but that could also force the man’s hand and make him shoot quicker. Right now, with a pacing man, muttering nonsense, there was still a chance he didn’t talk himself into shooting them.

  As long as Holden didn’t force his hand.

  There was no good solution. Nothing he could do that didn’t risk Willa. Holden held his gun steady, trained on the pacing man. As long as he wasn’t acting, as long as the gun was tapping against his palm and not pointed at anyone, Holden had a chance to come up with a solution.

  He racked his mind for any possible end result, but he was distracted by a tapping sound behind him. Soft, but distinct. A North Star code. He looked over his shoulder and saw Shay and Granger coming through the tunnel exit.

  Holden held up a hand, a nonverbal silence sign. There was no time to express his relief, no way to ask them why they’d come this way and not through the outdoor bunker entrance, and he couldn’t risk being heard to explain everything he needed to explain to them.

  He had to rely on rudimentary battlefield hand signals and hope to God they understood. Both nodded as if they did, so Holden motioned them close.

  They huddled together in the opening between back room and main room. Holden gave himself a moment to breathe, to center. To focus on the end result.

  Willa and Elsie safe. Nothing else really mattered.

  “On go,” Holden said under his breath, knowing his voice would be muffled by the sound of crying coming from inside the room. “No loss of life,” he added, because the last thing he wanted for Willa, even knowing her father was the bad guy in this situation, was for her to have to watch him die.

  Holden would do whatever he could to spare her that. If it meant risking his own life. He wouldn’t leave her with that image. What she was enduring now was bad enough.

  He wouldn’t let her die, and he wouldn’t hurt her more than she’d already been hurt.

  He breathed, watched, listened. The man began to speak again.

  “They can torture me, but I won’t let them torture you. We’ve been found out. Our cover is blown. We’re surrounded. There’s no escape this time. They can get what they need out of me. But not you. I won’t let them hurt my girls.”

  He began to raise the gun to point at Willa. Directly at Willa.

  “Go!”

  As Holden had hoped, the sudden yell drew Willa’s father’s attention to him and not Willa. Holden, Shay and Granger moved into the bunker as one.

  Willa’s father swung the gun toward them, but his angle would hit Shay, so Holden shot at the man’s arm. There was a howl of pain, and the gun he’d been holding clattered to the floor. He didn’t fall to the ground, and another gunshot rang out.

  Granger shooting to get the man off his feet.

  Holden didn’t have time to regret it as blood bloomed on Willa’s father’s shirt and he grabbed his side and stumbled backward.

  Shay was already untying the three women, and the one Holden assumed was Willa’s mother immediately scrambled forward to her husband. Granger was wrestling the man’s arms into a submissive position, and Willa’s mother wasn’t impeding his progress at all. She was just crying and murmuring things to her thrashing husband. Granger had it under control, so Holden turned to Willa and Elsie.

  Elsie was completely limp. Shay moved to her immediately, checking vital signs when Elsie didn’t move even once the ropes were off.

  “Mom said she was drugged. I don’t know what or how, but she’s not dead. She’s breathing,” Willa was saying, pushing the now-lax rope off her.

  She didn’t immediately stand up. Her wound from yesterday was bleeding again, and she was pale as death. “Did he hurt you?” Holden demanded.

  “He...” She looked at where her father lay on the ground. Then back up at Holden, green eyes heartbreakingly vulnerable. “Is he going to die?”

  “I...don’t know.” He didn’t know how to lie to her, but the expression that crossed her face—pain and a sense of loss that he had to assume was more than one kind of loss—made him wish he had.

  He held out a hand and helped her to her feet. She wavered once upright, and Holden grabbed her before she fell over. Then he simply...held on. Somehow he was murmuring things, and he wasn’t even sure what. Just that she was okay and it would somehow be okay. It was a jumble even to his own ears.

  Willa sobbed quietly into his shoulders, her fingers digging into his back as he held on. Vaguely he heard Shay on the phone with Betty asking for any kind of medical backup they could get, but to be careful.

  Careful, because there were still men out there. “They said they were surrounded. What does that mean?”

  Willa sniffled and shook her head. Though she pulled her head off her shoulder, she didn’t release him and he didn’t release her. “I don’t know. I don’t understand anything that’s going on. Mom...”

  Willa’s mother turned from her husband. He was lying still, but Granger was still holding pressure on the stomach wound. Shay was on the phone, cradling Elsie’s head in her lap, giving instructions to Granger, likely relayed from Betty, on how to stop the bleeding.

  It was a madhouse, and they still weren’t safe.

  “We were undercover, working for Ross Industries. Our assignment was to get the names of two possible hit men targets. We’d gotten them, but we were made before we could relay the information. William and I ran for it, coming here. We thought the bunker, but...” She looked back at her husband. “He...snapped. He told them where we were. He said we had to end it.”

  When she looked up at Holden, he saw Willa’s green eyes, heartbreaking and devastated. “This isn’t him. I don’t know what happened. He just...cracked.”

  Holden looked at Shay and Granger. They were still hovering over the man like he had a chance to live.

  But they had to get out of here first.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  He just cracked.

  Willa felt an odd relief. Her father wasn’t evil. He’d been good. He’d been the man she’d thought. He’d just cracked. But that knowledge did nothing to help the situation.

  She couldn’t seem to stop clinging to Holden, but they were still in danger, and they had to get Dad to some kind of medical center. They had to.

  “What about the hit man who got ammunition here?” Holden asked Mom.

  Mom looked down at Dad once more, then slowly got to her feet. She took a deep breath and straightened her shoulders. “He was picking up the ammunition and one of the names. I met with him myself.”

  “And gave him the name?” Holden asked incredulously.

  She shrugged. “It was the job, and the only way to get the name and get out in one piece. William and I were supposed to be out by now, reporting the name to our superiors.”

  “You haven’t yet?” Willa asked breathlessly. She looked wildly around at Shay and the man who’d come in with her, then Holden. Panic rose
. Someone was out there going about their life about to be killed? Willa couldn’t stomach it. She couldn’t stand it. “We have to. We have to get the names to whoever will stop them. No one should die.”

  “People die in this world, Willa,” Mom said, looking down at Dad’s still body.

  Willa looked up at Holden, desperate to find someone who agreed. Who understood. But his mouth was grim, and his eyes were unreadable.

  And still he held her.

  “We need to think this through strategically. We have injured people who need medical attention. How many men are surrounding the house?”

  Mom moved around Dad’s too-still form and went for the computer. “I can bring up the generators and the computer. That’ll get video on them. Willa?”

  Willa knew Mom was asking her to help. Together they could get all the systems up and going faster. But she was loath to stop holding on to Holden. He felt like an anchor. Like a safe port in storm.

  But her father was likely dying, after suffering a psychotic break, and she didn’t want that to happen to anyone else here.

  She released Holden and stepped over to her mother. “Why can’t we go out the south field exit?”

  Mom looked back at Dad. “He destroyed it.”

  Willa swallowed against the panic and moved to get the generator running.

  “What about the names?” Holden asked. Everything about him flat and unreadable, but he was asking about the names. Willa found something unwind inside her.

  They could do this. Good could fight and win.

  “I can tell you one, but not the other. Only William knows the other.”

  Everyone in the room looked down at Dad. Pale. Blood dripping onto the floor no matter how much Granger held pressure on it.

  “We thought it’d be safer that way. If one of us got caught...” Mom trailed off. She shook her head and focused on the computer. “That’s why we left Willa some evidence, too. Coded. We just wanted her to have some leverage. But William...told them.” Mom swallowed. “When they found us out, he told them everything. That’s why they wanted to kidnap her.”